


Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge

by SleepySailorJunko



Category: Fallout 3, Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Based on a Tumblr Post, Blind Betrayal Spoilers (Fallout 4), F/F, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:49:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29235591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepySailorJunko/pseuds/SleepySailorJunko
Summary: Arthur is ten years old, and in the care of Sarah Lyons. He notices Knight Cole talking to Sarah because she doesn’t dress like everyone else. She isn’t in power armor, she doesn’t wear a scribe’s uniform. There isn’t as much muscle on her as there is on a normal Knight. Rather she’s almost sickly, walking in a sneaky fashion rather than the proud stride of a Brotherhood member.
Relationships: Female Lone Wanderer/Sarah Lyons
Kudos: 6





	Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge

Arthur is ten years old, and in the care of Sarah Lyons. He notices Knight Cole talking to Sarah because she doesn’t dress like everyone else. She isn’t in power armor, she doesn’t wear a scribe’s uniform. There isn’t as much muscle on her as there is on a normal Knight. Rather she’s almost sickly, walking in a sneaky fashion rather than the proud stride of a Brotherhood member. 

“Hello,” she says, smoothing out her leather jacket. It has a snake on the back. 

“Knight Cole.”He greets back, as is expected of him. 

“Alright, Sarah, I’ll let you go. Sorry for taking up so much of your time.” She pats at her hair awkwardly. 

“Oh, it’s no problem. I’ll meet you by the relay station.” Sarah answers, with the sort of respect that is expected of her station. “Arthur, let’s get going.”

He can’t help but frown. 

“That is Knight Cole?” He asks Sarah once they are alone. His guardian frowns. 

“Yes. She is a strong warrior and serves the Brotherhood well.” 

“She doesn’t look like it.” He says without tact. 

“She’s just sick.” Sarah explained, but he thought she was lying. “It wasn’t this bad before.”

\---

“Hello, Arthur.” She says.

“Knight Cole.”He responds.

“Thanks for watching him,”Sarah said, kissing Knight Cole on the cheek. “I’ll try and be back soon.”

“Ah, it’s no problem! Anything for you, Sarah!” The casual nature of the conversation bothered Arthur. Knight Cole should be referring to Sarah by her title and showing more respect. “So, Arthur, what are you doing?”

He hates the Lone Wanderer and her patronizing nature. He isn’t stupid. 

“I have been busy with my squire training. How has the wasteland been?” He answers.

“I just got back from visiting one of my favorite places, Little Lamplight. It’s an interesting place, and I try to stop by, lend a hand when I’m nearby.”

He frowned, but he’s intrigued.    
  


“I’ve never heard of it. What sort of place is it?”

“It’s a cave full of children. There aren’t any adults in the whole settlement.” She smiled. “When they grow up, they leave.”

“No adults? What about you?”

“Not one. They like me though, so they let me in. I bring some supplies and whatnot for them every once in a while.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a packet of bubblegum. ”Here, you want some of this? It’s good stuff.”

“I don’t believe you. How could they survive like that?”

“You’d be surprised. They’re pretty capable. Plus, they’re pretty decent with weapons, and they trade. Hell, even I had a gun when I was your age.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, actually. I still have it. You want it?”

“Really?” he can’t contain his excitement about this, even if he still thinks Knight Cole is lying. 

“Yeah, I’ll go get it. Just, uh, don’t tell Sarah, okay? I’ll show you how to use it.”

She’s gone for a moment, and returns with a BB gun. 

“My, uh, dad, he gave this to me. When we lived in the vault.” 

\---

For the next few years, the Lone Wanderer is part of his life. She’s just as much a part of his life as Sarah is. It’s comfortable, she’ll bring him treasures from the wastes: Grognaks, bubblegum, ammo for his BB gun, even a pearl-handled switchblade once. He eats dinner with Sarah and Knight Cole, and it’s pleasant.

But it ends. Abruptly, and unfairly, and it ends with Sarah’s life. He tries not to crumble, tries not to cry as he mourns for Sarah Lyons. 

“Arthur,”says the Lone Wanderer. She is in the infirmary, looking closer to death than he had ever seen. But he still wishes it was Sarah here, because it would mean that Sarah still lived. He turns back to the Lone Wanderer.

“Knight Cole.” he says. His voice is thick as he tries not to cry. 

“Where is Sarah,” She asks. “No one will let me see Sarah.” 

He had forgotten that Sarah is the person that Knight Cole loves, and he can’t bring himself to tell her. 

“Where is Sarah?”She presses again. Her voice is quite labored as she grows more agitated. 

But he just leaves. He’ll get someone to tell her because he can’t look her in the eye and tell her. He wishes Knight Cole was being recorded for the ages instead of Sarah. 

After all, who was with her at the time? After all, who could be at fault? 

It is over a month before he sees Knight Cole again. She knows what happened to Sarah. She has to know the fault lies with her. 

“Arthur.” She still looks weak, and at 14, he nearly towers over her. The Hero of Raven Rock limps and he frowns. 

“Knight Cole.” He says coldly. 

“I am sorry. About Sarah.” Even saying so much is enough to nearly bring her to tears. “We didn’t. I know that-”

“Good bye, Knight Cole.”The Knight is crying now, and he tells her to leave. 

\---

It is sometime before he sees that Knight again. He is busy, and trying to push her away. He pushes away anything that reminds him of Sarah. It’s better that way, and he doesn’t care how much the Lone Wanderer is hurting. Why should he? 

When he hears about her next, it is that she has left. For a mission anyway. 

In time, he rises to the rank of Elder. It is his birthright, he supposes. He wonders if Sarah would be proud of him, but shuts that thought out. Sarah would not be proud of him for alienating the Lone Wanderer and deeply wounding the person she loved. 

“Arthur.”She greets.

“Knight Cole. You are no longer welcome in the Citadel. However, you are not exiled from the Brotherhood. You will still complete missions and check in as ordered at Brotherhood outposts. Do you understand, Knight?” At his orders, an endless sorrow blossoms in her eyes. Yet another place she can no longer return to. 

“Yes, Elder, I understand. Goodbye, Arthur. I hope to see you again.”

“I hope I don’t. Collect your things and leave. Goodbye, Knight.”

Still, even after that, he did not forget the Lone Wanderer. He still heard rumors of her triumphs (and it was always triumph) over the wastes. After letting Sarah die, he supposed, the least she could do was faithfully serve the Brotherhood. Even the former outcasts had some fondness for Knight Cole, which he scarcely believed.

That did not soothe the flames of irritation that grew whenever he found a package of bubblegum or a tin of BBs on his desk. He didn’t even have the Vault Dweller’s BB gun anymore. 

Regardless, he moved forward, beginning his campaign against the Institute. There is going to be a war, and the outcome will change the Commonwealth forever. It is an all-hands-on-deck situation, to say the least. 

He wouldn’t say that he was necessarily surprised or even aggravated to learn of Knight Cole’s presence on the Prydwen. He can’t spare the effort to acknowledge her, and she’s doing her work. Besides, she is only barred entrance from the Citadel. 

He meets the new Initiate that Paladin Danse field-promoted. Like Knight Cole, she is a vault dweller. That isn’t the only similarity between the two; both have this sense of agency. They’re both wildcards, seeming free from the oppression of the wastes. He wonders if this is how Sarah felt when she first met Knight Cole, but he banishes that thought. 

A wild card, he thinks, to be kept at arm’s length. 

It is sometime before Knight Cole actually appears in front of him. (That is not to say that he hasn’t noticed her handiwork around the Prydwen). 

“Arthur,” she says. 

“That’s Elder Maxson to you, Knight Cole.” She ignores that and continues. 

“I have heard your orders. You want Paladin Danse killed. You sent one of his men to do the job.” 

“And what of it, Knight?”

“Paladin Danse is a good man, one of the few who still exist in the wasteland. He has done nothing but serve the Brotherhood faithfully. He doesn’t deserve death.”

“You would question your Elder?” 

“I would question Sarah’s boy. Is this what Sarah would want?” 

“Sarah was a fool, she was too soft!” And there is this terrible hardness in her eyes when he disparages Sarah and even as he said it, he knew it was a lie. “All the Lyons were! They were fools and they made the Brotherhood soft.” 

“Y’know, I’m lucky Sarah isn’t here right now. Because I doubt she’d approve of what I’m about to do.” And she hits him, hard. Even after ten years in the Brotherhood, she still doesn’t look  _ well.  _ But the strength she struck with brings that into question. “Sarah wasn’t a fool. She was a born leader, and a hero. Without Sarah, you would not be here.”

“No matter what Lyons would have wanted, the truth remains that Danse is a synth.” 

“Is that such a fault? It is not something that he had any choice in. He has always served the Brotherhood loyally. To throw him away, to have him executed would prove to the Brotherhood that you do not care about them. If you could have a devoted paladin executed so coldly-and by one of his own men-than what does that say of you? As a leader? Years ago, Sarah asked me to look after you, and I have always followed that oath. But Arthur, this is the sort of behavior that gets you killed, and I can’t let that happen.” 

He reminds himself that this is Knight Cole, the Hero of Raven Rock. 

“And what would I do instead, Knight?” 

“You could exile him from the Prydwen, as you exiled me from the Citadel.” 

“And yet you are still a thorn in my side. Exiling Danse would not do any good. It shouldn’t exist.” 

“It? Did you just refer to him as an it? I knew that schooling outside of the Vaults was lacking, but Arthur, that was downright ignorant. I thought you were a better man than this. I thought the boy Sarah and I had taken care of was better than this.” He pretends that hurt less than it did, even if he doesn’t know why it hurt in the first place. 

“I already sent that Knight out to take care of it. Whether it was right or not is no longer an issue.” 

“By order of the Litany-”

“ You have no right.” 

“I am going to go resolve this issue. I will be returning with both the Paladin and Knight. While I am gone, you will think about how this issue can be resolved peacefully.”

And then she turns her back and leaves. When she returns, it is with the Knight and Paladin.

“Elder Maxson.” 

“Danse.” Both men greet each other solemnly, and before Arthur can think of what he should say to the Paladin he tried to have executed, the friend who would have been killed if Knight Cole hadn’t intervened, he hears himself speak. “You would have let her do it?”

Danse grimaces. 

“I have never disobeyed your orders before, Elder. I was sitting down there waiting to die, and my only hope was that you’d send someone I didn’t know to finish the job. My life is still in your hands. I suppose it will always be.”

“Then I wasn’t in the wrong to have you killed?” he asks, as if the answer will lift him to absolution. 

“I understand why you did it. After all, I am a synth, and that isn’t something that can change. But I can’t forgive sending Nora to do it.” 

Danse’s forgiveness-no, the forgiveness of a synth wasn’t something that Maxson was willing to ask for. 

“If that’s all, leave. I’m sure you have work to be doing.” And just like that, he has brought Danse back into the Brotherhood. The incident is rarely spoken of, an unfortunate one in which falsified records claimed several members of the Brotherhood to be synths, and were ordered to be executed. Luckily, Knight Cole was able to discover the truth and prevent the orders from being carried out. 

Eventually, the threat of synth replacement disappeared with the destruction of the Institute. The Commonwealth chapter of the Brotherhood of Steel established itself. Utilizing the technology from the Institute, many improvements were made to better the Commonwealth. 

Arthur Maxson was the one to commemorate the Lone Wanderer after her passing. It was a valorous death, one fitting of the Hero of Raven Rock. He could not turn back the hands of the clock, could not prevent himself from making the mistakes of his youth, but he could honor someone who had been a friend to him. 

He almost wishes for a package of bubblegum to make its way to his desk. Still, he wishes Sarah was by his side, leading the way and teaching him how to move on. At least, he thinks to himself, the two are reunited. 

**Author's Note:**

> alright let me know if I've got something wrong. I don't know if this is just like a plothole or if the wiki is just wrong. But Sarah Lyons and Arthur Maxson-there's no way they could have been in a relationship. Sarah was 26 years old in Fallout 3. Arthur Maxson was 10 during Fallout 3. I'm 1000% uncomfortable with that ship, so I'm hoping the wiki was just wrong. 
> 
> anyway about the fic: Knight Cole. I didn't have a version of the Lone Wanderer made up, and I was looking at the wiki and the (male) lone wanderer is called Albert Cole. So I kinda ran with that. I didn't give her a first name, but I think it's probably Knight. She was very much in love with Sarah. The illness that they refer to was caused by her activating the purifier. Also the reason Arthur didn't have the BB gun anymore was because he broke it. Which is a real shame because I decided it was a Legendary weapon.  
> Knight Cole and Nora are friends by the way. And in case you were wondering who told Cole about Sarah, it was Danse. (Maxson ordered him to)


End file.
